Normally I don’t find myself becoming invested in many of the ballot measures that are proposed to Massachusetts voters come election season. This year however, several of the questions caught my eye.
Question 2, which would repeal MCAS as a graduation requirement, feels like a no brainer to me as someone who was a good student overall, but felt extreme anxiety as a test taker. While I haven’t decided how I am going to vote on Question 4, which would decriminalize five natural psychedelic substances, I think it is a fascinating question to see if it passes. Question 5, which would raise the minimum wage for tipped employees up to the current minimum wage is one that caught my eye.
If approved, the minimum wage for tipped workers would gradually go up from $6.75 to the current state minimum wage of $15 per hour in January of 2029. As part of the measure, employers would also have the option to create a shared tip pool, which would allow servers and bartenders to share wages with back of the house workers.
If you listened to the most recent episode of Reminder Publishing’s podcast, “So That Reminds Me” — which you can listen to here if you haven’t done so: https://tinyurl.com/5auxd4zm — you’ll know that I have some reservations about Question 5 as someone who previously worked in the restaurant industry.
Since we recorded that episode a week ago as I write this, I have thought about the question more and talked with friends who have also been in the restaurant industry and have decided that I am going to be voting no.
I completely understand the intent of the ballot question, which is to get more money to tipped workers, however, I think this is a little misguided. Under the current state law, restaurants are required by law to make up the difference for their tipped employees if they do not meet the $15 per hour state minimum wage.
As someone who worked in the restaurant industry for about five years, I feel that it was very rare for someone not to make at least the minimum wage from tips and I know in some cases people made much more than that.
Another concern I have is the shared tip pool. In the summary of the ballot measure available on mass.gov, there is no mention of how this would be established. If there isn’t a pool, will employees be able to keep their own tips as they do now? Will their employer be able to take them?
In addition to how the tip pools are split, I would also be concerned about how much a pool would limit somebody’s earning that is already making well above that minimum wage from tips alone. I can’t imagine people already making $25 an hour would be too happy about then having to split that with the rest of the restaurant.
What most concerns me is the devastating effect this could have on our smaller, mom and pop restaurants, where things may not be as busy as other restaurants. In these smaller restaurants it may be more difficult to hire workers at the state minimum wage, depending how busy they are, and could lead to closures for a lot of these smaller places.
In a story Staff Writer Tyler Lederer wrote about the question, which you can find here: https://tinyurl.com/3a6xhp69, he spoke with Frank Mozell, a Western Massachusetts organizer with One Fair Wage, the organization that brought forward the measure, who was pretty cold to the idea that raising the minimum wage for tipped workers would have negative effects on restaurants. He stated that restaurants face the same pressures every business faces and that the “burden of all that is still being paid off the backs of the tipped wage workers.”
While I understand the point that he is trying to make by showing how much these tipped employees work for their restaurants, the callous nature of the comment rubs me the wrong way.
Haven’t restaurants — especially our smaller, local ones — been through enough between COVID-19, rising costs of business and everything else? I don’t see why we are taking aim at places that people in our communities love, the last thing we need is for our local restaurants to start closing because they can’t keep up with rising costs for something that is completely avoidable.
In Tyler’s story, Union Square Owner Jeremiah Micka said that he would look at closing his 190-seat steakhouse in favor of focusing on banquet hall events.
In addition to restaurants closing or reducing services, I am sure potential restaurant owners will look differently at opening a place in Massachusetts because of the potential increased operating costs.
I also think that while the intention is to not have tipped employees rely on patrons for their full paycheck, they are going to have to make up for it in a different way. In Tyler’s story, Tribeca Gastro Bar & Grill Owner Tony Long said raising the minimum wage would increase his labor costs between 15-25%. With that kind of an increase, it’s common sense to expect that the consumer is going to pay a higher price for food at restaurants to make up that deficit.
One concern I also have is that much of the discussion in favor of increasing the tipped minimum wage is that much of the support from it is coming directly from One Fair Wage. I have received letters to the editor from restaurants and chambers of commerce against the measure, and have spoken to plenty of current and former restaurant workers on my own that are not in favor of the measure as it currently stands.
My only hope is that if this measure does pass, restaurants are able to prepare for that inevitable hike and that I am wrong, and we don’t lose valued pieces of our business community and places that residents love to visit regularly. I think if there were better measures to help smaller businesses that are already struggling with the potential increase in operating costs I would be in favor of it, but for now, I am voting no on Question 5.
More information on all of the measures on this year’s ballot is available here: https://tinyurl.com/2ph8p3k6.
